Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic

[GrandizerII]

You say "efficient cause" is necessary because intuition, then I say "material cause" is also necessary because intuition!

Everything that begins to exist must have a material cause.

If the universe began to exist, then it must have had a material cause.

However, if the universe is "all there is", then it could not have had a material cause.

Therefore, the universe did not have a beginning to its existence.

Therefore, the universe is eternal (and necessary).

Therefore, no [logically problematic] Creator God needed.

What was the material cause of Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina or Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony? These things began to exist (along with like 4 trillion other examples I could give).

You're talking about the sound waves and words on paper, or the abstract parts? Be clear on what you're referring to here when you say "Anna Karenina" or "Fifth Symphony".

There are other problems with you list, but let's start there.

I'm sure there are problems with the argument; this is because we're going along with outdated notions of causality/movement. As such, your "efficient cause" argument is problematic in various ways as well.

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So this is even more interesting. There is no material cause to a novel or symphony (only an efficient cause). Both are abstract objects. Yet they can be a cause of their own once read or heard. You can be compelled to act by a novel or emotionally moved by a symphony. In the same way, ideas (conveyed through language) are not material and yet can have so much causal power. So not only is it possible that the immaterial is the efficient cause on the material (us), but it happens constantly.

But concrete/material objects do require material causes (according to human intuition, at least). If the universe is considered to be material and concrete, then Aristotelian-based logic necessitates that it has always been because it couldn't have had a material cause external to it.

If, however, the universe is an abstract collective of material things, then it seems like it doesn't need a material cause after all. It just is, and always has been (in one form or another).

EDIT: One could also argue abstract objects that begin to exist have their "material cause" in the mind itself. Or that abstract objects emerge from the material objects that they are linked to.